Children of Soldiers

A Canadian National Film Board documentary premiering at the Global Visions Film Festival in Edmonton, Alberta this week should be a good one to watch for in the US.  “Children of Soldiers” is the follow-up to director Claire Corriveau’s acclaimed 2007 film, “Nomad’s Land,” about military wives.

"Canada's been at war since the Afghan mission began, but we don't talk about it," says Corriveau, quoted in an article by Jamie Hall in the Edmonton Journal. "Civilians don't feel it; it doesn't change our daily lives. But for thousands of people in Canada, they feel the war every day."

Corriveau was a military spouse before her husband’s retirement in 2007. “Children of Soldiers,” traces the lives of four military families during a parent’s deployment to Afghanistan in 2008.  The trailer shows French- and English-speaking Canadians between 11 and 14 talking about the experience of losing a parent. That was brought home tragically during filming, when the father of one of the families was killed in action. "We had to postpone some of the shooting,” Corriveau says. “We wanted to make sure these families wouldn't resent the fact we were filming their sorrows, and their difficulties."

Military children don't have a chance to build the same kind of relationships with parents as civilians do because of long absences and the life-changing work soldiers do. “I love my father, I love him deeply,” one child says in the film, “but sometimes I prefer him to be away because when he comes back, he's always angry, and he yells at us.” 

All this sounds very familiar, as of course it should.  War is war, and children are children, wherever they live. And so, apparently is the separation between the few who serve and the many who do not.“This isn't just the military's problem,” Corriveau reminds us. “The military is us, it's all of us: our brothers, our uncles, our friends, our sisters. We all have to share the burden that comes with these missions."

Children Who Serve

Yesterday I was interviewed at our local Fox affiliate about Xanthe's World and what I have learned about military children from my research for this blog. I felt proud and honored to be part of Veteran's Day in this way.

Here's the link:

http://www.fox5sandiego.com/videobeta/6fb797e7-31fb-4207-a5e6-cb9f729a7d0a/News/Children-Who-Serve

Our Youngest Vets

Happy Veterans Day to the ones who serve too. I’m talking about the children of veterans. I’m talking about the children of Memorial Day too. It’s fitting that we have a holiday to honor the service members who come home and the ones who do not. And it’s fitting that on Veterans Day we stop for a moment to say thank you to the children of servicemembers. Whatever we might think about America’s current wars, whatever we might think about the use of force or the flexing of military muscle now or at any other time, the policies and actions of our government are not their doing. The consequences of those policies and actions are, however, another matter.

I wish I could say that on this Veteran’s Day, the nation would pledge that fathers and mothers in military service would not be deployed so often or so long. I wish I could say that we pledge to make sure that whenever families have to move, children don’t lose ground in school. I wish I could say that everyone who meets military children will say how proud they are of them and their deployed parents instead of wondering aloud why in the world anyone would want to do the things soldiers are sometimes called upon to do. I wish I could say that if their parents come home wounded in heart and body that the help they and their families need will be there. I wish I could say that there is no need to be afraid or depressed. I wish I could say our wars will end honorably and soon. I wish I could say that whatever comes, we as a nation will not forget them.

I am glad I am getting to know military children a little better in the months I have been blogging at Xanthe’s World. It's a means, however small, to try to be there for these often overlooked young people who fight their own battles because their parents have been called to fight ours. Veterans Day is not a holiday associated with resolutions, but that doesn't mean it can't be. Please join me, if you are among the 98 percent unaffected personally by this war, in finding your own way to serve too.

Better Schools for Our Children

More than $38 million in grants was given out by the Department of Defense Education Activity this year to 32 public school districts serving large numbers of military children. We are so often bludgeoned with incomprehensibly large numbers--who can even understand what a billion dollars really represents, much less a trillion?--that my first reaction to this news was to wonder “why so little?”  Then I realized that for a school district to receive on average more than a million dollars to help military children is no small thing.

According to Elaine Wilson’s Army News Service article, “Public Schools Serving Military Children Benefit from Grants,”  schools receiving grants have around 190,000 total students, approximately 37,000 of whom are from military families in communities near more than 30 military installations.

Kathleen Facon, chief of DoDEA's educational partnership, explains that "while we really want to enhance opportunities for military students, these grants also provide an opportunity to raise achievement for all students." It does work better, in my experience as an educator, to assume that any special program could benefit far more students than it targets, and it may work better for military students not to be singled out, but be part of a wider school program. 

  

Funding was based on the number of military-connected students at the school, with grants ranging from $150,000 to $2.5 million. Most focused on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, many using innovative technology such as smart phones and other hand-held devices to learn math.  For a professor teaching humanities, as I do, smart phones create a parallel universe of text messaging, so I had to smile at the idea of a classroom full of students told to pull out their phones rather than put them away!

Classroom academics are not the only focus of the grants. Military children transitioning into a new school often need help adjusting to new demands, both academic and social.  Colleges recognize how difficult it is to step into the middle of an ongoing class, and they don’t allow it, but K-12 is a different matter, and if a new family shows up five, ten, twenty weeks into a school year, the children are thrown right into the middle of what may be an unfamiliar curriculum and different classroom environment. Several grants address these needs, funding programs to facilitate class placement and social integration, or offering after-school homework clubs and tutoring.

I have written in the past about one of the grantees under the DoDEA’s program, a consortium of districts in my own area (San Diego) that is working with the University of Southern California’s Masters of Social Work students on a program to help schools in the area be more responsive to students from military families. 

An estimated 90 percent of military students attend public schools.  Though the DoDEA’s effort can provide important planning information and identify  promising practices, in the end the $38 million will only impact a few children. I wonder what the plan is for the others.  

The Medical Toll on Children

Stories are all over the internet today about an article in the December 2010 issue of Pediatrics. The article, “Parental Wartime Deployment and the Use of Mental Health Services Among Young Military Children,” by Beth Ellen Davis presents the results of a study led by Dr. Gregory H. Gorman of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, which analyzed the health records of 642,397 children ages 3 to 8 with parents in the military.

It compared the frequency of health visits from 2006 to 2007 when a parent was deployed with those when the parent was home. It is the most comprehensive study conducted to date of military families’ use of health insurance during wartime. Children from ages 3 to 8 were chosen in part because they were developmentally at the stage where Gorman had seen an increase in parental concern about their children’s behavior among patients in his pediatric practice.

The researchers found that the children saw a doctor or other health professional about six times a year and about once every two years for a mental health reason. During deployment of a parent, however, the visit rate dropped by about 11 percent for physical problems but rose by 11 percent for psychological complaints. Stress, anxiety and attention-deficit problems were among the more common diagnoses.

Children at the upper end of the age group studied, the 7- and 8-year olds, had the most marked problems. The causes of stress include frequent moves, prolonged parent absences, and fear of a parent’s death. The study also revealed larger increases in mental and behavioral visits among older children, children with military fathers and children of married military parents.

Many researchers and practitioners have noted the stresses on today’s military families, and so the findings of increased visits for behavioral and mental health problems was no surprise. What did surprise Dr. Gordon was to find that the rates of visits for all other medical conditions dropped. "I have no direct evidence, but we hypothesize that when a parent is deployed... and the other parent has to do all of the duties, they may want to handle other problems at home," Gorman said. "These parents who remain at home need to multi-task even more." This is a matter for some concern, since presumably illnesses or injuries for which a parent might seek medical attention in calmer times are not receiving the same level of vigilance now. This could harm both the child and the parent, who may be feeling guilty about not being able to do what he or she once did for the child.

In Gorman's study, the most frequent primary diagnosis during visits for mental or behavioral issues was attention-deficit disorder (ADD). Adjustment and autistic disorders came next, followed by mood and anxiety disorders, oppositional defiant disorder, developmental delays, post-traumatic stress disorder, bedwetting and separation anxiety. In cases of ADD and autism, Gorman says that those conditions may worsen during deployment and become harder to manage for the remaining parent.

These findings are particularly important for nonmilitary pediatricians, because they provide almost two-thirds of the outpatient care for military children. “It’s not clear yet whether kids are in fact suffering more mental problems when a parent is deployed, or that mothers are more attendant to any shift in behavior,” one of the researchers says. “That’s the next question we have to ask.”

Worried About Dad

We’ve probably all had the experience of being surprised that someone is worried about us, or upset because he or she didn’t know where we were or that we were safe. We knew where we were and knew everything was fine, so what’s the problem? 

It’s like that for families of deployed servicemembers. Much of a deployment is spent doing routine things around the base, but families don’t know what is happening at any particular moment, so the worry is constantly there.

In a  good article by Erica Voll, “The Other Side of War,” appearing in the online magazine SJ, we meet National Guard Colonel Col. Dennis Devery’s twelve-year-old daughter Callan and eighteen-year-old son Connell. Devery has been deployed to Afghanistan with his National Guard unit since January 2010 (that's Devery with daughter Callan in the photo). “There are days when I am taking care of errands or doing laundry,” Devery says. “But my family at home doesn’t always know that. They think we are in constant danger.” 

Psychologist Jennifer Perry specializes in treating children and adolescents. “Kids respond to stress differently than adults do,” says Perry. “They may not know how to express their thoughts and feelings so instead, they act out behaviorally, develop physical symptoms of stress, or develop separation anxiety, difficulty concentrating or phobias.” Perry goes on to note that “most children don’t experience significant problems....Much of the child’s adjustment depends on the remaining parent’s adjustment.” 

Kelly Devery, the at-home parent agrees that children handle things differently and that handling the parenting alone is difficult. “We have two children at two very different points of life, and I think it impacts us all very differently. Dads certainly bring a different perspective, and it’s been hard to tackle the challenging things that come up while raising a 12- and 18-year-old.”

Callan and Connell don’t talk about their Dad too much with friends because their friends are a way of forgetting their worries.  “My friends don’t understand,” Callan says. “Their parents are home and safe.”

Callan worries about her father’s safety a great deal. “No matter how safe he says he is, he is still in that unsafe area.” The news upsets her so much she tries not to watch.  Dennis has mixed feelings about this, because he wants his children to know the good things our armed forces are doing, instead of just imagining the bad things that might happen.

Fortunately, the base in Afghanistan is set up with video equipment, phones, Internet and Skype, and Dennis checks in with Kelly once a day.  Because of the time difference, the children miss most of these calls, but they are still reassuring. 

“I miss studying, fishing and going to baseball games with him,” says Callan. “I just miss him being around.” Connell, a freshman at Burlington County College feels the same way. “He wasn’t here for my senior year play or even my high school graduation,” he says. “I miss him, but I know he’s helping out a lot of people who are less fortunate than us Americans, and I am proud he is over there doing it.”

The best news of all is that Dennis will be home for Christmas--for good. “Having him home,” Kelly says, “will be the greatest gift to us all,” a sentiment with which Connell and Callan heartily agree.  Welcome Home, Dennis.  Well done.

Military Family Month

We are now one week into Military Family Month, proclaimed by President Obama. “Across America, military families inspire us all with their courage, strength, and deep devotion to our country,” the proclamation reads. “They endure the challenges of multiple deployments and moves; spend holidays and life milestones apart; juggle everyday tasks while a spouse, parent, son, or daughter is in harm's way; and honor the service of their loved ones and the memory of those lost. [...] Just as we hold a sacred trust to the extraordinary Americans willing to lay down their lives to protect us all, we also have a national commitment to support and engage our military families.”

The proclamation goes on to paint in broad brush what the Obama administration is doing to support and strengthen military families, but the emphasis of the proclamation is that while only a small percentage of Americans are in military families, all of us share in the responsibility of caring for these families and our veterans. “By offering job opportunities and workplace flexibility, businesses and companies can benefit from the unparalleled dedication and skills of a service member or military spouse. Through coordination with local community groups, individuals and organizations can ensure our military families have the help they need and deserve when a loved one is deployed. Even the smallest actions by neighbors and friends send a large message of profound gratitude to the families who risk everything to see us safe and free.”

It's heartening that many people do care, and act on their gratitude.  It's good that this gesture was made, especially in the month of the year most associated with giving thanks.  Still, there's something disheartening about proclamations too, as if they suggest that come December 1, we can move on and not have military family month anymore.  That is, of course, if anyone other than the choir listened in the first place.